Fossilization is a psychological language phenomenon in the process of foreign language learning, which often leads to the stagnation of foreign language learners after they acquire certain listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. This paper analyzes the causes of fossilization of college students' language and the corresponding teaching strategies from two aspects: internal factors (learners' learning motivation, learning strategies and emotional factors) and external factors (social environment and teaching environment).
1 preface
In the process of second language acquisition, the language system used by learners is called interlanguage (IL). Nemser calls this language an approximate system, which means that learners can only get closer to their mother tongue, but they will never reach the level of their mother tongue. Similarly, today's situation is that although college students start learning English from junior high school or even primary school, no matter how long it takes and how hard they try, they still can't reach the level of native speakers of the language. Why is this happening? This is because when they are learning English, interlanguage will have such a process: when the learners' target language level improves, those language forms (pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, etc. What often appears in the process of learning will often appear, that is, staying in their interlanguage permanently becomes a way for learners to understand or produce language. This stubborn error solidified in interlanguage is the fossilization of language.
Fossilization is a common phenomenon in the process of second language acquisition, which greatly restricts the improvement of second language learners' level. Therefore, it is of great significance to explore the causes of language fossilization and teaching strategies for breaking this deadlock and improving learners' target language level.
2 college students' language fossilization
Through the direct or indirect study of fossilization from different levels and angles, a series of factors are considered to be the reasons for fossilization of learners' interlanguage. On the whole, these factors can be divided into two categories: internal factors and external factors, among which internal factors can be divided into cognitive factors, neurophysiological factors and social emotional factors. Among them, the author's analysis and classification of college students are as follows:
2. 1 internal factors
2. 1. 1 learner's motivation
Learners' learning motivation can be divided into comprehensive motivation and instrumental motivation. Comprehensive motivation means that the main purpose of learning is to communicate with the users of the language, or to be interested in the national culture and history of the language; Instrumental motivation means that the purpose of learning is to achieve practical results. Generally speaking, learners with comprehensive motivation are not affected by environmental changes, and their intensity and persistence exceed instrumental motivation. For example, the main purpose of most college students in China to learn English is not to enter English-speaking countries, but to pass exams, get a position that changes their social status and qualifications or read scientific and technological documents. So once they achieve their goal, their instrumental motivation will disappear and English learning will stagnate.
2. 1.2 Learners' learning strategies
Learning strategy refers to the learning methods, management methods and various activities of using language in the learning process. This includes cognitive strategies, metacognitive strategies and social strategies. The successful application of learning strategies can promote foreign language learning, otherwise it will lead to fossilization. This is the most common fossilization in the learning process. For example, in the process of learning, most students put too much emphasis on memorizing learning methods, especially memorizing the meaning of foreign words, as if learning English is just learning the meaning of new words, but not paying enough attention to how to use words for target language communication. As a result, students often can't remember new knowledge when using the language, or use limited and simple language forms in high school or even junior high school, which leads to fossilization over time.
2. 1.3 Emotional factors
The factors leading to language fossilization mainly include interest factors and willpower factors. Learners' interest in learning is an important prerequisite for foreign language learning. A strong interest in learning can enable learners to maintain a strong curiosity and thirst for knowledge in the learning process, so as to actively learn. At present, all students in our country learn English from kindergarten to doctoral students. On the surface, this nationwide craze for learning English seems to be a manifestation of China people's love for learning English, but is this really the case? Dong Yanping (2003) found that with the extension of English classes, students' interest in learning gradually decreased. 1200 key teachers interviewed claimed that the number of students who like English classes dropped from 88% in grade one to 75% in grade six. In other words, at least a quarter of our children don't like English classes after learning English in primary school. After finishing middle school and high school, college students may not be so interested. In addition, China is a vast country with different levels of English education. Students' lack of English application ability is exposed. Faced with the basic application of English in college English teaching, they found that they could neither understand nor speak, and suddenly lost their interest and confidence in learning. If you don't understand that you can't go to school well, you don't like to go to school well, forming a vicious circle, and rigidity also comes from it.
2.2 External factors (external factors)
External factors mainly refer to environmental factors, emphasizing the influence of social and cultural differences and their psychological distance on learners' learning psychology.
2.2. 1 social environment
For many years, our country has always attached importance to English teaching, and has made some achievements, but English is not a second foreign language for us, but a foreign language. There is no language community in Chinese mainland where English is the main communication tool. Students' English learning is basically carried out in school according to the teaching plan, either as a major or as a course.
2.2.2 Teaching environment (teaching environment)
Regarding the relationship between teaching and fossilization, it is generally believed that teaching plays an active role in accelerating the learning process and preventing fossilization. However, teaching may also have limitations. If used improperly, it will play a negative role and promote the formation of rigidity. The teaching environment mainly includes classroom input, teaching strategies and practical opportunities.
1). Classroom input (classroom input)
Input refers to the target slogan materials that foreign language learners are exposed to. Acquisition only happens when learners have the opportunity to accept the input of the target language, or it can be said that there is no acquisition without input. Formally, the input can be oral or written; From the way of occurrence, input can occur in both two-way communication environment and one-way non-communication environment; In fact, the input can be positive or negative.
The teacher's words are especially important in class. In many countries in Europe and America, English teachers must use the target language as their mother tongue, while in China, most English teachers use Chinese as the target language, lacking any experience in studying, living and working in English-speaking countries, so they are also second language learners, and the form of discourse in class is interlanguage. If no measures are taken to make their words closer to the target language form, then students' second language learning will be negative, such as using Chinglish. The rigid language use of some teachers is one of the reasons for the fossilization of students' interlanguage.
In addition, the choice of non-native languages in textbook compilation is also a factor that causes English fossilization. English intensive reading courses adopted by many universities, especially listening and speaking courses, were published at least five years ago or even 10 years ago, which is far from the actual communication. So in the use of language, it will be too rigid and rigid.
2). Teaching strategies.
In classroom teaching, the student-centered concept has already penetrated into teachers' thoughts, but it is easy to fall into a spoon-feeding misunderstanding in the specific operation process. The number of students in a college English class ranges from dozens to hundreds. Teachers can't follow the classroom teaching rules of dialogue theory, and can't carry out cooperative and functional exercises, so they can only adopt indoctrination teaching, which makes students lose interest in language learning and leads to fossilization of interlanguage.
3). Opportunities for practice.
Students' ability to communicate in English in class is very limited, so the teaching environment is not enough to meet students' communication needs. However, after class, when learners are often under communicative pressure, that is, foreign language ability can not meet the needs of communicative tasks, it will also lead to fossilization. In the actual communication environment, most learners pay attention to the expression of language meaning, while the correct expression of language is often too busy to take care of. If the errors expressed by learners are not noticed and corrected for a long time, they will permanently exist in their interlanguage, resulting in fossilization.
3 teaching strategies
The above-mentioned fossilization process involves social factors, emotional factors, the quantity and quality of language input, etc. Understanding and analyzing these factors is of guiding significance to foreign language teaching.
3. 1 Help students develop correct learning motivation and enhance their interest in learning English.
Learning a language is a long marathon, and teachers have the responsibility to give students psychological and spiritual support, inspire students to contact and use English through various channels, so that students' motivation for learning English is not limited to coping with exams, and gradually develop a desire for the target language culture. At the same time, when designing teaching tasks, teachers should comprehensively consider the difficulty, interest, challenge to learners and learners' autonomous learning and judgment ability, so as to ensure that students keep certain interest in the task while completing the task and avoid anticlimactic.
In addition, teachers should help students build up their self-confidence in learning English, set short-term learning goals, make a step-by-step learning plan, encourage and praise students' progress in time, enhance students' courage and confidence in continuing learning, and constantly improve their own requirements, all of which can be achieved through unremitting efforts.
3.2 Improve teaching strategies and create the best environment for English listening and speaking learning.
Lack of language environment is the biggest learning difficulty for English learners in China. In teaching, teachers often give up trying to interact with students because they are passive, and students sometimes become passive because they are not interested in the topic. Therefore, teachers should pay attention to how to arouse students' enthusiasm and attract their attention, and work together with students to create a good environment and infiltrate English learning into daily life. For example, classroom teaching is interspersed with English humor, current affairs news and cultural background knowledge. After class, we can organize English corner, English debate contest, English song singing contest and English movie appreciation under the guidance of the teacher. In addition, multimedia-assisted teaching is a good way, which is very popular among students in teaching practice. Using multimedia, teachers can learn a lot of rich and authentic language materials, and let students contact with authentic language materials as much as possible.
3.3 Pay attention to language input and strengthen teacher training.
Language input is the closest link with foreign language teachers. Ensure that the information received by students is closest to the target language. For example, new textbooks should be replaced in time to keep up with the times. English listening materials should be selected from English-speaking countries such as VOA and BBC, and avoid collecting corpus from other non-native radio or TV stations. Grasp the difficulty of language input. Only when the input level is slightly higher than the learner's current level and can be converted into understandable input, otherwise it will lead to fossilization. When learners reach a certain language level, they should appropriately improve the quality of target language input, that is, its interest, diversity and difficulty. This can prevent and avoid learners from reusing the expressions and grammatical structures they have learned before.
Since English teachers themselves are second language learners, theoretically speaking, English used in English classroom teaching is also an interlanguage. Therefore, teachers should use classroom language carefully to avoid pragmatic failures and make it closer to the target language. Improve teachers' teaching level and try to avoid fossilization of interlanguage from the source. In addition, teachers should understand students' language ability and design exercises and tasks that are suitable for students' level and challenging to students' ability.
4 conclusion
Fossilization is a common phenomenon in foreign language learning, which is the result of the interaction of many factors. Firstly, this paper briefly introduces the fossilization of interlanguage, analyzes its causes, and looks for corresponding teaching strategies, so as to achieve the ultimate goal of studying fossilization: to maximize the role of learners, improve language quality and speed up the learning process.
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